Let Your Own Discretion be Your Tutor
by Elizabeth Jay
Summary: Title borrowed from Shakespeare's "Hamlet." Damian has played many roles, although he's come to find out that he isn't much of an actor.


"Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word; the word to the action." - William Shakespeare; _Hamlet_

**Be better.**

His mother tells him to be stronger, faster, smarter . . . but what she means is "Be better. Be more like your Father, my Beloved."

Damian trains to earn her approval, strives to match the triumphs of a grown man so that he will be the perfect son. Damian earns every scrap of affection that his mother has ever shown him, and sometimes it seems as if there is no end of tests to win her regard with ever better results.

Father is a hero, but Mother is everything else.

So Damian tries to become the Bat for her, to fill the space his father has left vacant. He likes to make his mother smile.

**Be better.**

His grandfather watches his training from a distance, always sending down new teachers, new opponents, new tests and that has a clear message too-silent, but clear. It's "Be better. Be the Heir that your mother cannot."

Damian can emulate his mother too. He can become more graceful. Damian can display cunning and coquetry in equal measure. As it endears Talia to Ra's, so it also wins Damian little favors from his grandfather: knives, new books, the occasional sweet . . .

Damian learns to inspire loyalty at his mother's side, but he's been proclaiming loyalty to the House of al Ghul for longer than that.

Damian can be everything his mother is and the male heir his grandfather needs.

**Be better.**

His father is not what Damian expected. There are gaping holes in the way Damian portrayed the Batman for his mother, but no one had ever pointed them out to Damian. He's reluctant to pull out much of his Bat routine for his father, and he falls back on mimicking his mother at first.

That is a disaster.

He makes demands, crushes the opposition, and brings his father the head of an enemy. He echoes his mother's pitch with the derisive comments, and affects her softer tone when speaking of the future Damian assumes is his own . . . the one his mother promised him.

It doesn't make his father soften the way his mother does when Damian plays the Batman for her. Bruce Wayne never looks directly at him, and he makes new demands of Damian. "Don't be an al Ghul. Be better. Be my son. Be . . . Tim."

Timothy Drake who is his father's protégé, and Damian has observed his competition carefully. Drake is entitled, hard-working, and people flock to him despite the distance the older boy puts between himself and his companions. Drake has decent skills in combat, but he is weak. He underestimates Damian, and dares to "go easy" on the ten year old. It's almost too easy to deceive and defeat Drake.

It is much harder to become him.

Damian puts in the time and the effort; his training has always made the American teenager's efforts laughable. Damian clings to his assumptions because Drake obviously makes his own; people cater to them incessantly in this house. Damian learns the laughable scale of expected ability and suffers at the hands of the Red Hood just like his predecessor. He even wears the colors of Robin.

But when he pushes people away, they don't rush back.

**Be better.**

Grayson is simpler. He is a second rate Batman, and strangely satisfied with a lacking Robin. When he begs Damian to "Be better" he is asking Damian to "Be more careful. Be okay. Please be okay."

That is . . . oddly comforting. Grayson doesn't play by the same rulebook as everyone else, and Damian can't get too comfortable. This won't last. Grayson asks specific things of him, but there is no name attached. When Damian imitates Grayson (the acrobat's moves _only_), it is for himself.

**Be better.**

He tries on Bruce for a mission. Batgirl assumes it is because he misses his father, but it's simply the first name he can think of.

Which may or may not have to do with the role that he's been considering to meet Pennyworth's approval. The butler is difficult to figure out-easy enough to predict displeasure, but not to grasp the man's expectations. The ten year old understands that Pennyworth raised Damian's father, was presumably fond of the boy, and tolerates Damian for that reason alone.

Imitating the Batman had not worked. Perhaps becoming the younger, newly orphaned Bruce might prove more effective. He's uncertain; while the butler endorses becoming a better Damian regardless of parentage, Pennyworth sometimes looks at him as if searching for something in Damian's features. Damian still doesn't know what Pennyworth is looking for. He's not precisely sure who a better Damian is, but he thinks perhaps with more research, Damian could be a better Bruce.

Damian can do better, and he will.

But he discards the role of Bruce after the mission with Batgirl is completed-Damian doesn't know how to be a child.

**Be better.**

Brown is an annoyance, a pretender, but Damian is well-acquainted with that role. He's not sure if she can recognize it in him, but it doesn't matter. Brown is a teacher at heart. When she recognizes a lack in Damian, she corrects it. Unfortunately, a great deal of this correction involved musicals and unnecessary carbohydrates, but no one else has taught him how to act like the child they all wish to see.

Gradually his undercover missions at her side improve as Damian learns to play with his peers and recognize the references that sailed over his head before. Damian learns how to get his way when Grayson is being difficult, how to blend into a crowd of school children, and everything there is to know about Harry Potter.

Brown teaches and while she will scold, tattle, harass, and shove him into line . . . Brown also throws out these little doses of verbal approval like confetti. An _"attaboy"_ here and a _"now you've got it"_ there or even a dramatic _"See!"_ It's a novel experience.

When Brown says "Be whoever you want/need to be" she is still insisting that Damian "Be better" like all the others. But even that sounds like an encouragement when it's the stupid girl saying it.

**Be better.**

Drake tells him to "Try being a little less like yourself."

What he means is "Be anyone else. Anyone else would be better." It's not a new role at all. The Titans have been asking that of him all along. People have asked that of Damian his entire life, and like a chameleon Damian changes with every role. Every movement destroys the illusion, but Damian has been trained to hold still amongst other things.

Other roles.

It's a sharper wound that Drake inflicts, and Damian likes to consider it a mark of growth that he didn't hit the older boy. He prefers to keep his secrets after all. Red Robin doesn't have any idea of the roles that Damian has assumed over time-more in the last year than the ten that came before. Drake has no idea what an utter failure being Tim has been for Damian.

He has assumed leadership. He has antagonized and reached out awkwardly in turn to each of the Titans. It has worked no better than playing Tim for his father. It is exhausting, and Damian is doomed to fail.

Every role fails in the end. Damian has to be enough by himself.

Drake wants Damian to "Try being a little less like yourself."

"Tt." is all Damian returns, "I tried."


End file.
